Wish Upon a Matchmaker

“Great,” Danni declared. “Water it is. And dessert,” she added in a lowered voice, talking quickly. So quickly that he had to replay the words in his head in order to realize what she’d just said. “Kitchen’s this way,” she told him, leading the way to the rear of the house.

“I don’t need dessert,” Stone told the back of her head. At the moment, it was the safest place to look. If he lowered his eyes for even a second, he knew he’d regret it. The view was far too tempting. Her hips were moving at a tempo that was all but synchronized with the beating of his heart.

“Sure you do. Everyone needs dessert,” she assured him.

Reaching her final destination, Danni went straight for the refrigerator and the secret weapon she used to win everyone over.

Her dessert.

Chapter Three

This was obviously a man who did not like being told what to do, Danni decided as she placed the large plate of freshly made dessert on the table. When he was growing up, his mother probably had to suggest that he drink his milk, otherwise, she was willing to bet, he went out of his way not to touch it just to prove his independence.

In some ways, she supposed she could relate to that. While she liked being polite, she was never anyone’s pushover.

Maizie Sommers had sung this man’s praises, which meant that in the Realtor’s experience, the contractor got an overall A rating for both the quality of his work and the prices he charged. That was certainly more than good enough for her, Danni thought. There was no way she wanted to antagonize the man on top of already being late for their appointment and having kept him waiting.

So Danni put on her very best smile and graciously accepted his refusal of her dessert.

“Don’t worry, I won’t force-feed you. But it’ll be right there, waiting for you, just in case you wind up changing your mind,” she told him, moving away from the table. “Okay, why don’t I show you what needs doing?” she offered cheerfully.

Stone barely nodded. “That sounds like a good idea,” he agreed.

Danni began to regret not wearing a sweater. Did this man take time to warm up, or was he always going to be a wee bit cooler than an artic breeze?

It wasn’t that she required Stone Scarborough to ooze personality and charm, it was just that she knew the work she had in mind wasn’t going to be something that could be accomplished in a day or a week—or a month, even if the man moved in to do it. Since this would be a long, drawn out process and they would be around each other for a long stretch of time—unless he had a magic wand in his arsenal or a squadron of eager elves at his disposal—she definitely didn’t want to feel uncomfortable in her own home for the duration of the renovations.

That meant, quite simply, that they had to get along.

More than that, it required, in her opinion, that they liked each other, at least to a modest degree. She wasn’t looking for a best friend, but neither was she looked for someone who behaved as if he might appear on the cover of Grouches Inc., Monthly some time in the very near future.

So, as she showed the general contractor around her two-story house, Danni did her best to break through what she viewed as his crusty outer shell, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t wind up just coming up against a crusty inner shell.

“Have you been a general contractor long?” Danni asked, trying to draw him into a round of pleasant smalltalk.

She actually knew the answer to her own question—she’d Googled Stone Scarborough during the very short lunch break she’d taken at the studio and found the contractor’s website—but it was the first question that occurred to her. In her experience, people liked to talk about themselves. It tended to put them at ease.

“Long enough to get it right,” Stone answered crisply. “I can give you references from former clients if you’d like,” he offered.

It couldn’t hurt, Danni thought. “I’d like,” she echoed out loud.

More than his caliber of work—which, because Maizie had recommended him she assumed was top-drawer—Danni wanted to talk to the women whose houses Stone had worked on. She wanted to find out if he’d been as monotone with them as he was being with her. At least then, if his personality came across the same way with them as it did with her, she wouldn’t feel as if she’d offended the man.

“Then I’ll get them to you tomorrow morning,” Stone promised her. “Do you want to wait until you’ve had a chance to look them over, or do you want to go ahead and tell me what you had in mind by way of changes for this house?”

Danni looked around for a moment, as if making up her mind one final time before speaking. As it happened, she’d already decided and she wasn’t seeking other’s opinions on his work to see if he was equal to the project. She just wanted to know if he ever turned out to be a “real, live boy” or continued being as wooden as Pinocchio for the entire time he worked on their renovations.

Turning toward him, Danni summed up the answer to his question regarding the work she wanted done in one succinct word. “Everything.”

Because he was waiting for an answer to the first part of his question first, her answer initially confused him. “Excuse me?”

“Everything,” Danni cheerfully repeated. “I need a great many changes made to this house, from top to bottom.”

Stone found that that made no practical sense at all to him. “If you want to change everything, why’d you buy the house in the first place, if you don’t mind my asking?” He knew that in her position, he wouldn’t have. But then, he’d come to realize that the female mind worked much differently from the male one.

For one thing, logic appeared to have little or no place in it, or in making final decisions.

“No, I don’t mind,” Danni replied.

From her tone, he felt she wasn’t just putting on an act or pretending not to mind the personal question he’d just asked—God knew that he would have. So far, she sounded pretty guileless, considering her gender. Maybe she wasn’t so typical, after all.

“I bought the place because it had a price range I could afford,” she admitted honestly, “the front yard had a great orientation for my flower garden and, as they say in real estate, the house looked like it had ‘a lot of potential.’”

Stone shook his head when she was finished. “That’s usually real estate speak for ‘the house is a real clunker.’”

“But it does have potential,” Danni insisted. “I can see it.” And she really could. When she walked through the fifty-year-old house, she could visualize the changes she wanted. The transformation would make the two-story house into a showplace.

Stone merely shrugged. It was her money. “If you say so,” he conceded. And then he got back to something she’d said about the property’s orientation. “You have a flower garden?” he asked. When he’d come up the front walk, he hadn’t seen a single bud and when she’d brought him into the kitchen, he had a view of the backyard—which also barren. Where was this so-called flower garden of hers?

Her smile held promise rather than embarrassment. “Not yet. But I intend to.”

Stone took a wild guess. “This is more of that ‘potential’ the property has, right?”

The woman practically beamed at him, as if to congratulate him that he was finally getting the hang of it. “Right.”

Why did she feel as if she were on trial? Maybe he was just trying to see if she committed to this and wouldn’t lose interest and send him on his way in the middle of the job. If that was what he thought, he didn’t know her. Once she signed on to something, she remained committed for the duration.

For the time being, she decided to stop trying to make a personal connection with the man and just get his input on the house. Danni continued showing the contractor around.

Stone quietly followed the woman through the first floor, listening to the sound of her voice as she pointed out room after room, giving him a thumbnail summary of what she wanted changed or added or redone in each one.

The first floor was comprised of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen that fed into a family room and a slightly larger than closet-size bedroom that was located all the way in the rear, just off the family room. The entire floor had one bathroom.

The second floor, with its wide-open staircase and carved wooden banister, contained three more bedrooms, including the less-than-masterful “master suite.” There was a bathroom between the two bedrooms and another bathroom within the master suite. The second floor also had a recreational room which, she discovered when he corrected her, was called a “bonus room” in Southern California.

Stone listened without comment as she pointed things out, saying things like “I’d like bookshelves all along that wall” when they were in the bonus room, and “a walk-in closet here would be nice,” in the master bedroom. He neither nodded, nor said a word one way or another until the “tour” was over and they came back downstairs to the kitchen.

Unable to endure the man’s silence any longer, Danni finally asked, “Well? What do you think? You haven’t said a single word during the whole tour.” Did that mean he wasn’t going to take the job? Was she just wasting her time with him?

“You were right,” he replied quietly.

She watched him, waiting for him to continue. Right? Right about what? She’d done a lot of talking in the last twenty minutes.

“Yes?” she asked.

“When you said ‘everything.’” He’d thought she was kidding at the time, but it was obvious that she had to be serious. Every room needed to be redone in order to make it more useful, more pleasing to the eye and part of the twenty-first century.

He had one all-encompassing suggestion for her. “You just might be better off tearing everything down and starting from scratch.”

“Not everything,” Danni protested. “I actually do like the fireplace in the living room, and the staircase. And the balcony in the rec—The bonus room,” she corrected herself.

In response, she saw what looked like a hint of a smile on his lips. At least she’d managed to make a very slight connection, Danni congratulated herself. It looked like the man was human, after all. And that meant that there was hope. Maybe they would be able to get along in the long run.

She crossed her fingers.

Stone watched her for a long moment. Just as she was going to ask what he was thinking, he said, “You like the balcony, huh?”

The feature, visible from the street, was what had attracted her to the house in the first place. That and the colors it’d been painted: gray and Wedgwood-blue. Like her parents’ house had been, back in Atlanta. It made her a little homesick to see it, even though the actual structure looked nothing like her old home.

“Yes,” she responded, then after a beat, asked, “You don’t?”

He dismissed the appendage under discussion with a wave of his hand. “Well, since the balcony doesn’t look out onto anything but the cul-de-sac and the house across the street, I was going to suggest you close that up and extend the bonus room by the balcony’s square footage.”

Danni rolled the idea over in her head, trying to picture a large window rather than the two sliding-glass doors currently there. The glass doors separated the bonus room from the balcony. The latter ran the width of the room, which in turn was the length of two of the three garages. Because the bonus room ended over the second garage, the third one had never been finished. Something else she wanted Stone to add to his list. She wanted the garage to be finished and to have an attic put in, complete with stairs that folded out onto the garage floor.

“It’s worth considering,” she told him. “I’ll think about it.”

The balcony would continue to thrive, he could see it in her eyes. He had one more suggestion for her. “It might be less expensive if you just sell this place and get something more to your liking.”

She looked at him, confused. Didn’t he want the work? “Are you trying to talk your way out of a job, Mr. Scarborough?”

He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. “Just wanted you to be aware of all the possibilities.” He paused, letting that sink in and then informed her, “All those suggestions you made during the tour, they’re not going to come cheap.”

How dumb did he think she was? “I didn’t expect them to. That’s why I waited before looking into having it done until my contract was renewed,” she told him. “I wanted to be sure the money was there before I started to undertake all this.”

That was commendable, Stone thought. He’d seen far too many people who harbored grandiose plans, only to allow themselves to get overextended and in over their heads when they neglected to take escalating prices and building costs into account.

He took another long look at her. The woman might look like one of those fluffy blondes who seemed to be almost everywhere you looked in Southern California—most of them would-be actresses—but she seemed to have a head on her shoulders.

Maybe they would be able to work things out, after all.

“When would you want me to get started?” Stone asked, then added a coda. “Provided, of course, that the estimate that I’m going to work up for you doesn’t turn your hair gray.”

As he talked, she subtly directed him back toward the kitchen table—where the coffee she’d made and the dessert she’d left were still waiting for them.

“I’m sure it won’t,” she told him. “And even if it did, there’re enough hair-care products out there to restore my hair to its natural shade,” she assured him with an easy, unself-conscious laugh. “Ms. Sommers seemed really sold on you and I trust her judgment implicitly. And I really liked what I saw on your website,” she added for good measure. “Some of those before-and-after photos were absolutely incredible.” That had really impressed her and confirmed the man’s abilities.

Stone had always believed in doing the best possible job he could, bar none, but he’d never been very comfortable being on the receiving end of praise. Now was no different.

He shrugged off her words, and murmured, “My sister was the one who put together the website,” as if that were enough to deflect the compliment and allow him to remain anonymously in the shadows.

“Your sister,” Danni echoed. The information didn’t diminish her response to his work and actually enhanced it slightly, expanding it in another direction. A direction she naturally followed.

“So, it’s a family business?” Danni assumed.

“No” was his first response, but then he reconsidered. He had to admit that in the last couple of years or so, Virginia had become exceedingly involved in helping him run his construction company—in more ways than just one. “Well, actually, yes in a way,” he amended. “Virginia put together that website and she handles the accounting end of the business.”

Initially, Virginia had done freelance accounting for several small businesses in the area, his among them. But of late, his business had been taking up more and more of his sister’s time. It would be nice, he caught himself thinking, to be able to pay her accordingly.

If this woman was serious about two-thirds of the things she said she wanted done to her house, he could afford to pay Virginia more money—not that she ever asked for more. That wasn’t her way—but he knew he’d be lost without her, not because of her accounting—or the fact that she had put together that website behind his back which, lucky for her, had turned out well—but because she was always there to help him with Ginny.

If not for Virginia, he would have had to resort to turning over Ginny’s care to complete strangers and he didn’t like the idea of people who weren’t family or friends looking after his little girl. Especially since Ginny was not all that easy on some people’s nerves. Strangers—even strangers who were paid for the job—were not always all that patient.

Virginia was.

“That sounds pretty much like a family business to me,” Danni was saying, unaware that there was a wistful smile on her lips. She would have given anything to have a brother or sister around to work with, to be there for them—and have them be there for her. She had some cousins, a couple who had relocated here as a matter of fact, but it wasn’t the same thing. “You have any other family?” she asked.

What was with all these non-work-related questions? “Why?” he asked.

“No reason,” Danni replied with an innocent shrug. “Just curious. I guess I just like knowing things about the people I’m dealing with.”

Stone had momentarily been captivated by the movement of her shoulders as they rose and fell in an innocent shrug.

But he came to fast enough.

“All you need to know is that I take pride in my work and I stand behind everything I do,” he informed her.

The woman nodded in response, then continued looking at him without saying a word. It was against his better judgment, but he decided there was no real harm in it, either. So he told her what she was obviously waiting to hear for reasons that completely escaped him.

“I have a daughter. Ginny. She’s four,” he added, “going on forty.”

The smile he received in return made the surrender of this small piece of information oddly worth it.

“My father used to say the same thing about me,” Danni recalled fondly. He’d always followed it up by telling her to slow down, that there was no hurry, the years would all be waiting for her no matter how long she would take to reach them.

“Well, my condolences to your father, then,” Stone told her. There wasn’t so much as a sliver of a smile as he said that.

Danni’s own smile didn’t appear to waver, but when he looked closer, Stone realized that what he was seeing was pain etched into the edges of that smile. She was far too young for that sort of pain.

“Too late for that,” she told him. “He passed on a few years ago.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that,” Stone told her stiffly. Then, to his surprise and horror, he heard himself saying, “Ginny’s mother did, too.”

He had absolutely no idea what possessed him to share that with her. Only that it somehow seemed appropriate at the moment.

Rather than gush or give him empty platitudes the way he expected, the woman whose house he’d just finished touring and whose table he was currently sitting at, reached over and placed her hand on his. The soft, gentle, fleeting contact seemed to convey the level of her sorrow, their common shared sorrow, far better than a battalion of words ever could have.

“Are you raising her by yourself?” she asked. There was compassion in her voice.

Sometimes it felt that way, but that was unfair. Virginia dealt with Ginny far more than he did—unless he was between jobs and had the time to spend with Ginny. “My sister moved in to help when my wife died.”

“Your sister the accountant who does your website?” she asked just to keep the details straight.

The smattering of a smile grew just for a moment before returning to a neutral expression. “That’s her.”

Danni smiled broadly again. “Then it really is a family business, isn’t it?”

He considered the situation for a moment, then realized he had no idea why he was fighting the concept so stringently. He wouldn’t have been able to take on any new jobs if it hadn’t been for Virginia. At the same time, his sister had placed her life and her own business pretty much on hold because of him.

That needed to change.

Soon.

Just not yet.

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